For those, such as the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Congressman Michael McCaul, who take comfort in the repeated individual jihadi attacks such as occurred in New York City as a sign of the weakness of our enemies, we can only point out that they have not done their homework and studied what the Jihadists have said…

Successful jihad will only happen within an ummah [Islamic nation or community] in which the fighting creed is firmly established and clarified. This must happen in order to attain the “Revolutionary Jihadist Climate” that will spontaneously give rise to instruments of resistance.

Violent jihad is as an individual duty obligatory upon every Muslim. All the ulema have said this…”

We fight them for the sake of incidents to cause political pressure and psychological collapse, so that they leave our lands. Carrying out a small operation every month against the enemy will have more of an impact on him than a big operation every year or two.

Toward a New Strategy in Resisting the Occupier
Muhammad Khalil al-Hakaymah
Al Qaeda Chief of External Operations
Killed by US air strike in Pakistan in 2008

Both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda have issued audio, video or online threats to attack the West this Christmas.

These threats focus on European population centers, such as Paris and London, and New York City in America, though the possibility of Jihadi attacks in other places in the West can certainly not be discounted. History has shown that places as diverse geographically as Brussels, Berlin and San Bernardino have all been targeted, especially at Christmas time.

Lone Wolf or Individual Jihad?

The possible attacks in the West could take the form of organized, planned attacks directed from Jihadi leaders overseas or inside Europe or America, or they could be carried out by individuals “inspired” by Jihadist ideology.

Ironically, very often, Western media and officials seem to take some form of weird comfort when a deadly attack ends up being the work of an individual jihadi, as opposed to an organized cell or affiliate of a known terrorist group.

In reality, the opposite should be the case.

First of all, none of the Jihadist groups–Islamic State, Al Qaeda, HAMAS, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, Lashkar e Taiba, Ansar al-Sharia, Abu Sayyef, Jemaah Islamiyeh–issue membership cards or wear uniforms. So a case can be made that classification of an attacker as “inspired” or “directed” could be a distinction without a difference.

But there is a difference between a cell such as the 19 hijackers who carried out the September 11 attacks after training and planning conducted by Al Qaeda’s leadership and infrastructure, and the husband and wife team who shot up a Christmas party of people they knew and worked with in San Bernardino. (Though it is vital that we understand that their acts are based on the same Islamic doctrine and they are tied together by the same Jihadist ideology.)

So which flavor of Jihadi is more dangerous?

If you’re on the receiving end of an attack, it makes no difference to you, but by casualty count, the cell would appear to pose a greater threat. On the other hand, the inspired attacks seem to happen much more frequently.

A case can be made that individual Jihadis pose a greater challenge for our intelligence and law enforcement communities.

Cells have to be organized, trained and communicated back and forth with. All of this provides opportunities for detection and even infiltration.

Individual jihadis don’t offer any of these potential vulnerabilities. One can infiltrate a cell, especially one in which members are using cell phones and email to contact each other and leaders elsewhere. How does one infiltrate one guy, like the Chattanooga, Tennessee shooter, the Orlando shooter or the Uzbeki vehicle jihad attacker in New York City?

If the individual jihadi isn’t communicating with others and no one is aware of his or her plans, how are our intelligence and law enforcement assets supposed to detect them “left of bang” (before the attack)?

Unfortunately, here in the West, and the U.S. in particular, we have failed to even properly identify the nature of the threat. A popular term in Western vernacular to describe the threat of individual jihad is the term “lone wolf.”

The term “lone wolf” does not appear in Islamic doctrine, nor is it part of any Jihadist group ideology.

What is part of Islamic doctrine and Jihadist ideology is the concept of Jihad as an individual obligation. So what we have been seeing around the world are acts of individual jihad based on Islamic doctrine and Jihadist ideology. Given the basis for these attacks, they are not “senseless violence.” We can explain and understand these attacks based upon Islamic doctrine and Jihadist ideology.

Most importantly, the wave of individual jihadi attacks in recent years is all part of plans articulated by Jihadi ideologues:

Successful jihad will only happen within an ummah [Islamic nation or community] in which the fighting creed is firmly established and clarified. This must happen in order to attain the “Revolutionary Jihadist Climate” that will spontaneously give rise to instruments of resistance.

Violent jihad is as an individual duty obligatory upon every Muslim. All the ulema have said this…”

We are now seeing this “Revolutionary Jihadist Climate” in the West as evidenced by the rise of seemingly spontaneous acts of Jihad carried out by individual Muslims with no known direct contacts with Jihadist organizations.

It is this threat that we are most likely to see this Christmas.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from your Local Jihadi

Warnings in Jihadist literature and on Jihadi social media aren’t meant to give us a heads up. They are meant to inspire individual Jihadis to rise up and attack, in this case during the Christmas season. If recent history is any indication, we will see an act of deadly jihad somewhere in the West as a result of these communications.

The Christmas and New Year season is a particularly high-risk period as it offers unusually large numbers of potentially high-value and high-casualty targets, not just in places like New York, London, Paris and Berlin, but in just about every major city in the West.

The holiday season brings large crowds at sporting events, Christmas celebrations and ceremonies, churches, parks, restaurants and other gathering locations. In addition, the holiday season is also characterized by high volumes of leisure travel leading to large numbers of travellers in airports and train depots. The vast number of potential targets makes it virtually impossible for homeland security and law enforcement agencies to deploy enough personnel to successfully prevent every possible attack.

The Western holiday season is particularly attractive to Islamic jihadists because any successful attack, even a minor one, becomes a propaganda victory that can inspire others to follow suit and aid in Jihadist organization recruitment (despite what the U.S. government has said, Jihadis don’t recruit based on the prison at Gitmo; they recruit based on their successful attacks).

Jihadists have repeatedly demonstrated their will and capacity to plan and execute attacks during high-profile events. The Nice (July 216), Berlin (December 2016) and Manchester (May 2017) attacks show how individual jihadis and small cells can successfully carry out mass-casualty attacks. Despite their resounding defeats in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State continues to benefit from supporters in the West, which means there is a greater risk of terrorist attacks in the West during the holiday season.

We are most likely to see vehicle jihad using large trucks, knife jihad (stabbings) and shooting attacks, but improvised explosive device (IED) attacks are certainly also a possibility using pressure cookers (Boston marathon bombing), fertilizer and diesel fuel (1993 World Trade Center bombing) or propane tanks (failed Time Square VBIED attack).

This is why intelligence services and foreign service offices continue to issue bulletins almost on a daily basis for Europe. As Christmas nears, we should expect to see such alerts issued for major events in the U.S. as well.

Way back in February of 1998, Osama Bin Laden declared a Jihad against Jews and Crusaders in a written document entitled the “World Islamic Front Statement.”

In that document he specifically stated:

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it

Despite this, with just a few notable exceptions over the years, few Muslims answered Bin Laden’s call to kill Americans.

Bin Laden was of course killed by U.S. Special Operations forces in May 2011.

Since then, we have seen many more attacks here in the U.S.

Why? If Osama Bin Laden was not able to inspire Muslims to attack and kill Americans, why are we seeing so many such attacks in recent years? Such as:

• The 15 April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

• The Orlando night club massacre on 12 June 2016.

• The San Bernardino massacre on 2 December 2015

• The Chattanooga massacre on 16 July 2015

• The failed Garland, Texas attack on 3 May 2015.

• The Queens, New York hatchet attack on police officers standing on a street corner on 23 October 2014.

• The Philadelphia attack on a police officer sitting in his squad car on 7 January 2016

• The Moore, Oklahoma beheading of a grandmother at the hands of a Muslim co-worker on 26 September 2014

• The 28 November 2016 terrorist vehicle attack on Ohio State University campus.

• The September 17-19 2016 bombings in New York and New Jersey.

• The Fresno, California shooting on 18 April 2017.

These are just a few of the incidents in recent years, here in the United States, that have, unfortunately, been categorized as “lone wolf” terrorist attacks by our recalcitrant news media.

In fact, the term “lone wolf” does not exist in Islamic doctrine. What DOES exist in Islamic doctrine is the fact that Jihad is an individual as well as a collective obligation.

What we are seeing are in fact individual acts of Jihad–acts of war, not criminal acts. We continue to deny this at our peril. There is a doctrinal basis for the enemy that is waging war against us. This form of warfare does not require formal ties between fighters or units (organizations) waging the war.

The concept of Jihad being an individual obligation is longstanding and has its basis in mainstream Islamic law (Shariah). We can see this from a widely-read and used text of Shariah sold annually at the convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest Muslim organization in the United States, which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing prosecution in U.S. history: the U.S. v the Holy Land Foundation. In that trial, ISNA was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group. Interestingly, ISNA’s Canadian wing was shut down in 2013 for funneling money to a Jihadist terrorist group in Kashmir.

The name of the Shariah text is A Summary of Islamic Jurisprudence by Dr. Salih Al-Fawzan and published by Al-Maiman Publishing House in Saudi Arabia. Al-Fawzan is a member of the Board of Senior Ulema in Saudi Arabia and also a member of the Permanent Committee for Fatwa and Research in the kingdom.

Volume One of this work has a chapter devoted to Jihad. On page 473, the basis in Shariah for individual Jihad is explained in detail and reveals for us why we are seeing this escalation of attacks:

For a Muslim, there are certain cases in which jihad is an individual duty:

1) When a Muslim is present at the battlefield, it is obligatory for him to fight and he is prohibited to leave the battlefield and flee.

2) When enemies attack a Muslim country…

3) When a Muslim is needed to help his fellow Muslims fight their enemies.

4) When a Muslim is called by the ruler (or the one in authority) to fight in the Cause of Allah, for the Prophet (PBUH) said:

Whenever you are called for fighting in the cause of Allah, you should go immediately.

As you can see, these four circumstances are quite broad and all could be interpreted as existing right now. But numbers 2, 3 and 4 are particularly relevant right now and serve as the doctrinal basis for why Muslims have suddenly begun rising up in violent Jihad in the West:

• The Islamic State has called on Muslims to wage Jihad because the Islamic State is under attack. This applies to 2 and 3 above.

• Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State has issued calls on Muslims in the West to rise up in Jihad. This applies to 4 above and is the key difference between the days of Bin Laden and today.

Bin Laden may have been admired by many Muslims, but he never declared himself as a Caliph and his calls for Jihad were mostly ignored. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s calls are being answered because he has declared himself as the Caliph and many Muslims recognize him as such. That is why were are seeing acts of individual Jihad that we mostly did not see before.

And that is why the U.S. and the West cannot tolerate the existence of the Islamic State over the long-term. It has become the flame attracting moths. It will only gain more legitimacy and strength if it is allowed to persist. In short, it must be destroyed.

HERE ARE TWO IMPORTANT PASSAGES THAT APPLY TO WHAT WE ARE SEEING TODAY. The news media and our elected officials seem to take comfort when an attacker was “merely inspired” by the Islamic State (ISIS) and were not directed by the Islamic State. The opposite should actually be the case, as reflected by the two remaining passages below from two important Jihadi ideologues:

Individual jihad has recurred throughout Islamic history. In the time of the Crusades…groups of mujahideen responded to the crisis. Many isolated expeditions and groups carried out the obligation of jihad.

Individual jihad using the method of urban or rural guerilla warfare is the foundation for sapping the enemy and bringing him to a state of collapse and withdrawal. It will pave the way for the desired strategic goal.

What mandates these methods as a strategic opinion is the imbalance of forces between the resistance and the large invading alliance of unbelievers, apostates and hypocrites.

We fight them for the sake of incidents to cause political pressure and psychological collapse, so that they leave our lands. Carrying out a small operation every month against the enemy will have more of an impact on him than a big operation every year or two.

Toward a New Strategy in Resisting the Occupier
Muhammad Khalil al-Hakaymah
Al Qaeda Chief of External Operations
Killed by US air strike in Pakistan in 2008

Successful jihad will only happen within an ummah [Islamic nation or community] in which the fighting creed is firmly established and clarified. This must happen in order to attain the “Revolutionary Jihadist Climate” that will spontaneously give rise to instruments of resistance.

Violent jihad is as an individual duty obligatory upon every Muslim. All the ulema have said this…”

These two passages reflect what we are seeing today, not just in the USA, but even more so in Europe, as evidenced by the March 2017 London parliament shooting and the 20 April 2017 police shooting on the Champs Elysees.

Over a decade ago Al-Hakaymah called for frequent, small-scale attacks rather than big 9/11 type attacks. What we are seeing today was clearly part of the Jihadists’ plans.

Again, well over a decade ago, Al-Suri foresaw an environment in which individual Jihadis would rise up spontaneously in resistance without specific direction and planning from a higher, central authority. Again, that is clearly what we are seeing today.

This “Revolutionary Jihadist Climate” spontaneously giving rise to instruments of resistance is NOT something to take comfort in at all. It is problematic for law enforcement and the intelligence community and dangerous for Americans.

A terrorist cell connected directly in some way to Al Qaeda leadership can be detected, infiltrated and taken down as it communicates with and receives orders from commanders overseas. But individual Jihadis or Jihadi couples who have the intention of carrying out attacks are much more difficult to detect and are very nearly impossible to infiltrate.

The “Revolutionary Jihadist Climate” spontaneously giving rise to instruments of resistance is a relatively new, dangerous phase in the global Jihadist movement.

In case you haven’t noticed, the global Jihadist insurgency has entered a new, more dangerous phase in the past two years.

The number of Jihadis and the number of attacks that they have carried out–as well as the number of casualties they have inflicted and the number of countries they operate in–has grown drastically.

The excellent, private IntelCenter organization estimates that the Islamic State has killed 18,000 people in 28 countries since they declared their Caliphate on 29 June 2014.

This includes individual acts of Jihad carried out in this country in places like Orlando, Chattanooga, Boston, Garland, San Bernardino, Queens and Philadelphia.

There is no reason to believe that this trend won’t continue. The effort to take down the caliphate is half-hearted at best because it simply isn’t something our president is interested in. He feels as if he killed Bin Laden and that should have been enough. Never mind that the world has become awash in Jihad since then.

Because of the complete lack of leadership on this vital issue, our federal bureaucratized counterterrorism apparatus is not even allowed to study Islamic threat doctrine–the very doctrine that the Islamic State cites repeatedly.

Time and time again we find that the warning signs of the Jihadi attackers were missed. We were warned about the Tsarnaev brothers (the Boston bombers) repeatedly by the Russians and the FBI knew that their mosque was founded by a convicted Al Qaeda member. Yet they were still able to carry out their attack.

There were warning signs about the San Bernardino Jihadis as well. The female, Tafsheen Malik, used a fake address to obtain a visa to enter the U.S. She also gained entry into the U.S. under the horribly flawed federal “Visa Express” program that allows applicants to bypass the interview in the screening process.

Moreover, DHS whistleblower Phillip Haney has testified before Congress and written in his new book, “See Something, Say Nothing,” that he had been ordered to cease investigations into Tablighi Jamaat, the notorious Islamist organization that had ties to the San Bernardino mosque.

Then there is the case of Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, who was twice interviewed by the FBI because he was in the contact list for an American Islamikaze bomber in Syria and because he made “incendiary” remarks to co-workers about Jihad. Oh, and his Dad posted pro-Taliban videos too. He was given the all-clear, only to end up massacring 49 innocent Americans.

What all this points to is the vital need for state and local law enforcement to take the lead against Jihad inside this country. I promise you, the NYPD does not wait for the FBI to vet suspected terrorists. Other state and local agencies around the country need to take the same approach, albeit with resources that can’t match the NYPD, which is probably the most effective counterterrorism law enforcement organization anywhere in the world.

The fact is, the Feds are unaccountable. They can’t follow up all the leads they have now and very often have a lack of knowledge as to what or who they are dealing with. I have a hunch that the FBI agents who interviewed Omar Mateen probably thought he was creepy at best, but they had nothing to charge him with and they had to go about their business. Complicating matters even more is the fact that both the FBI and DHS are forbidden from tying Islam to terrorism. That restriction right there makes them ineffective at conducting counterintelligence operations.

State and local cops are not unaccountable. They have deep roots in their communities. If an Omar Mateen is in someone’s precinct and they know he is a known associate of an Islamikaze bomber and made threatening statements about terrorism, they will keep an eye on him way past the initial interview. There won’t be much more important in that precinct once an Omar Mateen comes to the local cops’ attention.

Furthermore, state and local police are not under any restriction to refrain from studying the enemy threat doctrine. If the local sheriff or police chief is bold enough, he will mandate that his intelligence and investigative people get educated about the threat in an objective, unbiased manner–allowing the subject matter to take them where it leads them, rather than starting from the position that there is no connection between Islam and terrorism.

State and local police are now at the tip of the spear in this war. 15 years ago America sent soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines overseas to protect us all from Jihad. Today, local law enforcement is being tasked with protecting soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines from Jihad inside our own country. This is a profound shift in this war that has been lost on the overwhelming majority of the American people.

In Garland, Texas, it was a 62-year old motorcycle cop who gunned down the two Jihadi attackers who were wielding AK47s.

In Chattanooga, Tennessee, it was the local police who gunned down Mohammad Abdulazeez.

In Boston, it was Boston PD who ran down the Tsarnaev brothers.

In Queens, New York, it was rookie patrolmen who were targeted by and gunned down Zale Thompson.

The San Bernardino shooters were killed by members of the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department.

In Philadelphia, it was a police officer sitting in his patrol car that was targeted by Edward Archer in the name of ISIS.

And, of course, we know that it was the Orlando Police Department who responded to Omar Mateen’s massacre.

By the time DHS and FBI show up, they have to ask permission to cross the crime scene tape. In Marine Corps parlance, by the time the Feds get involved, it’s “right of bang.”

State and local police need to prepare to operate against Jihadis “left of bang,” and that means taking their own initiative and not depending solely on our bureaucratized, federal counterterrorism apparatus for training or intelligence about potential bad guys in their jurisdictions.

At some point America will come to a crossroads on this same issue. If a mosque is found to be involved in material support for terrorism in the US, it should NOT be protected by the 1st amendment of our constitution.

And make no mistake, it is in fact in the mosques that recruitment and organization for Jihad is occurring. Despite what the so-called mainstream media’s narrative claims–namely that “radicalization” occurs simply over the internet and social media–an honest review of history indicates that it is mosques that serve as the outposts for Jihad around the world.

There is evidence to support this.

In France this week, security agencies shut down three mosques. One was in Lagny-sur- Marne, a suburb of eastern Paris. Nine Muslims associated with that mosque were placed under house arrest and 22 others from barred from leaving France.

According to USA Today, in that investigation, police seized a 9mm handgun, a computer hard drive that was hidden behind a wall, as well as jihadist propaganda materials. Police also discovered documents about an unregistered Quranic school.

In addition, two other mosques, one in Gennevilliers in the northwest suburbs of Paris and one in Lyon, were closed by French police. Moreover, four Muslim “prayer rooms” in the Nice area in the south of France have also been shut down. It is worth noting that these so-called “prayer rooms” are very common throughout the West and are often operated in strip malls and in store fronts and private homes.

The Germans have been shutting down mosques for a few years now and, as of yet, they haven’t been hit by a Paris or Brussels-style attack.

Back in December, they shut down a mosque in Stuttgart that was involved in recruiting for the Islamic State:

“Through the association, donations have been collected for terrorist groups and fighters recruited for the Syrian conflict. In addition, the association and its members glorify jihad and religiously motivated terrorism.”

The German police confiscated computers, data storage devices, cell phones and documents in that raid.

In December 2014, the German police shut down a mosque in Bremen on charges that it too was recruiting for the Islamic State.

But the most notorious mosque in Germany was probably the Al-Quds Mosque in Hamburg. That mosque served as a meeting place for some of the September 11th hijackers and was finally shut down in 2010 after German authorities uncovered an Al Qaeda plot to launch terrorist attacks across Europe. Several members of the mosque had been recruited to travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan to train to participate in Jihad.

Contrary to what you may read or hear from pundits here in the U.S., the role of mosques in the U.S. is not much different from what we have seen in Europe.

The first indication of that came back in the 1990s as detailed in the book “Willful Blindness” by former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. That book details the conviction of Omar Abdel Rahman, also known as “The Blind Sheikh,” who preached at three different mosques in the New York area. Educated at the prestigious Al Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, Rahman issued a fatwa in the U.S. that declared it lawful to rob banks and kill Jews in the U.S.. His sermons condemned Americans as the descendants of apes and pigs.He called on Muslims to assail the West, cut the transportation of their countries, tear it apart, destroy their economy, burn their companies, eliminate their interests, sink their ships, shoot down their planes, kill them on the sea, air, or land.

Rahman recorded his sermons in Brooklyn on cassette tapes and sent them to Egypt as the spiritual leader of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, a Jihadist terrorist group based there.

Rahman was eventually convicted in 1995 of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison.

This was certainly not the only example of an Imam preaching Jihad and recruiting for Jihad at a mosque.

Anwar al-Awlaki was a U.S.-born Imam who went on to become the head of AQAP–Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Before that, however, he served as an Imam at the Denver Islamic Society (where he was caught encouraging a member to travel to Chechnya to fight the Russians), the Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami mosque in San Diego, as well as the notorious Dar al-Hijrah mosque near Falls Church, Virginia, where he preached to at least two of the September 11 hijackers and an Army doctor named Nidal Malik Hasan, aka the Fort Hood shooter.

Anwar al Awlaki. This New Mexico native became the Imam of choice for Al Qaeda, essentially leading the organization’s operations in Yemen.

Al-Awlaki fled the US after serving as the Muslim chaplain at George Washington University and actually delivering sermons to the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association at the U.S. Capitol. He met his demise in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

Then there is the case of Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, also known as Omar Shafik Hammami. He grew up in the quiet gulf coast town of Daphne, Alabama, served as the president of the Muslim Students Association at the University of South Alabama and went on to become a Jihadi fighter with Al Shabaab in Somalia. While this man was not an Imam himself, it is extremely suspicious and interesting that his father, a Syrian immigrant, served for a time as an Imam in Daphne as well.

Omar Hammami of Alabama

Another case in which the son of an Imam became a Jihadist terrorist is that of Adnan Gulshair el-Shukrijumah, the son of Gulshair Muhammad el-Shukrijumah, the Imam at the notorious Masjid Nur al-Islam mosque in Brooklyn, who made a career on the payroll of the Saudi government preaching Islamic supremacism and Jihad. The elder el-Shukrijumah also preached sermons at Masjid al-Farooq mosque in the same area of Brooklyn, which served as the religious base of operations for Ramzi Youssef and the other 1993 World Trade Center bombers. After all of this activity, the entire family moved to Florida where the elder Gulshair served as Imam at the Masjid al-Hijrah mosque.

Former Florida and New York resident Adnan Shukrijumah

The younger Gulshair did not follow in his father’s footsteps as an Imam preaching and recruiting for Jihad. He decided that joining Al Qaeda was the way to go. He rose in the ranks of Al Qaeda before being killed in a counterterrorism raid in Pakistan in December 2014.

It should be pointed out that the Imam fathers of these Jihadis denied any knowledge of how their sons could have found their way into Jihad…uh huh.

Finally we have the case of Carlos Bledsoe, also known as Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, named for his Imam as the Islamic Center of Nashville, who was recruited for Jihad in Nashville and sent to Yemen to a Jihadi training camp, before returning to the U.S. to murder U.S. Army Private Andy Long in Little Rock, Arkansas, as depicted in the movie “Losing Our Sons.”

If you haven’t seen that movie, you should, especially for the audio and video footage of Imams at mosques preaching violent Jihad.

What all this means is that Jihad isn’t just happening over the internet and social media. The French and the Germans evidently are starting to understand that, according to Islamic doctrine, mosques are not the same as churches in the West. In addition to places of worship, mosques are also the equivalent of the town hall, court house, school, community center…and the national guard armory.

Will our own bureaucratized counterterror apparatus ever wake up to this reality?

It’s Thanksgiving Day 2015 and, despite hollow assurances from a president who is increasingly regarded as cavalier about the national security of the United States, the country is on edge.

America is on edge because the Islamic State has been allowed to metastasize and spread over the past two years after President Obama dismissed them as the “JV” team.

Nor is the Islamic State “contained.”

Here is a list of the Jihadist entities stretching from the Philippines to North Africa, that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Among them is Boko Haram of Nigeria, which kidnapped and forced into slavery 300 Christian school girls over two years ago and continues to carry out savage attacks in west Africa…h/t Intel Center:

al-I’tisam of the Koran and Sunnah [Sudan]

Abu Sayyaf Group [Philippines]

Ansar al-Khilafah [Philippines]

Ansar al-Tawhid in India [India]

Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) [Phillippines]

Bangsmoro Justice Movement (BJM) [Phillippines]

al-Huda Battalion in Maghreb of Islam [Algeria]

Heroes of Islam Brigade in Khorasan [Afghanistan]

The Soldiers of the Caliphate in Algeria [Algeria]

Jundullah [Pakistan]

Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) [Pakistan]

Islamic Youth Shura Council [Libya]

Jaish al-Sahabah in the Levant [Syria]

Faction of Katibat al-Imam Bukhari [Syria]

Jamaat Ansar Bait al-Maqdis [Egypt]

Jund al-Khilafah in Egypt [Egypt]

Liwa Ahrar al-Sunna in Baalbek [Lebanon]

Islamic State Libya (Darnah) [Libya]

Lions of Libya [Libya]

Shura Council of Shabab al-Islam Darnah [Libya]

Mujahideen Indonesia Timor (MIT) [Indonesia]

Mujahideen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem (MSCJ) [Egypt]

Tehreek-e-Khilafat [Pakistan]

Okba Ibn Nafaa Battalion [Tunisia]

Mujahideen of Yemen [Yemen]

Supporters for the Islamic State in Yemen [Yemen]

al-Tawheed Brigade in Khorasan [Afghanistan]

Supporters of the Islamic State in the Land of the Two Holy Mosques [Saudi Arabia]

Ansar al-Islam [Iraq]

Leaders of the Mujahid in Khorasan (10 former TTP commanders) [Pakistan]

Boko Haram [Nigeria]

Jund al-Khilafah in Tunisia [Tunisia]

Jemaah Islamiyah [Philippines]

al-Murabitoun [Mali]

Mujahideen of Tunisia of Kairouan [Tunisia]

al Shabaab [Puntland region of Somalia]

Moreover, the Islamic State has now carried out multiple attacks in Europe and inspired multiple attacks here in the U.S. The FBI reports that they have open investigations into Islamic State supporters in all 50 states.

No wonder America is on edge.

Some will lament that the article linked below from the New York Times has images that show the unnecessary militarization of police forces in the U.S. And, while we agree, when one considers the Kalashnikovs, RPGs and hand grenades that the Jihadists have attacked civilians with around the world, can one really fault the police for taking steps to protect themselves and give themselves a fighting chance in a gunfight with Islamic barbarians?

If it was my son or daughter standing watch over a Thanksgiving Day parade, I’d want them to have body armor and firepower too.

So consider that when you wince at the sight of cops looking like soldiers.

Maybe if we got off our ass as a country and decided to take the fight to the Islamic State in earnest, our cops could go back to carrying revolvers and billy clubs…

Incidentally, we are less worried about the prospect of an attack on Thanksgiving Day than we are about an attack on Black Friday. The Jihadists tend to focus more on days that are important to them than on days that are important to us. Black Friday this year falls on 27 November, which happens to be the same date on which Pope Urban II launched the first Crusade to defend Christendom from centuries of Jihadist onslaughts …

At a news conference at a hospital where one officer was being treated for a serious head wound, Police Commissioner William Bratton said that investigators were still trying to confirm the identity of the assailant and determine a motive.

Asked if the attack could be related to terrorism, Bratton didn’t rule it out.

In this day and age when officials are almost always quick to rule out terrorism before they have any justification for ruling anything out, this statement almost amounts to a smoking gun…

Thursday evening the New York Police Department issued a patrol bulletin alerting officers to be in a state of heightened awareness after Wednesday’s murder of a Canadian soldier and shootout at the Parliament complex in Ottawa. The bulletin warns of potential attacks on uniformed officers.

Police from the Intelligence Division are checking the suspect’s hard drives for any cyber activity.

News bureaus are reporting another terror plot has been uncovered and disrupted, this time in Canada.

From Fox News:

Canadian authorities are expected this afternoon to announce the arrests of suspects who planned a major terrorist attack, possibly in the U.S., Fox News has confirmed. A Justice Department source confirmed the arrests Monday. There is no definite word on the target of the attacks, but New York City may have been one of the targets. An official says there is no current credible threat to New York City.

From CNN:

An alleged terror plot that has been uncovered intended to target “transport links,” an official with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police says.

Canadian authorities are expected to announce at a 3:30 p.m. ET press conference that law enforcement officials “thwarted a plot to carry out a major terrorist attack, arresting suspects in Ontario and Quebec,” according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

1435 Hours CDT:

From CBC:

Canadian police and intelligence agencies will announce later today they have thwarted a plot to carry out a major terrorist attack, arresting two suspects in Montreal and Toronto, CBC News has learned.

Highly placed sources tell CBC News the alleged plotters have been under surveillance for more than a year in Quebec and southern Ontario.

The two men are expected to appear in court tomorrow.

The investigation was part of a cross-border operation involving Canadian law enforcement agencies, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

According to a Reuters report, U.S. law enforcement and national security sources said the alleged plot targeted a railroad between Toronto and New York City.

RCMP uncovers VIA train terror plot: RCMP says it has thwarted a terrorism plot to derail a VIA passenger train bound on an undisclosed route with support from Al Qaeda in Iran, police announced Monday.

This article from the Christian Science Monitor contains significant amounts of information, but also clings to the myth, long since debunked that Iran and Al Qaeda have not allied in the past and bases this on the Sunni-Shiite rift, which of course is ridiculous on its face due to Iran’s ties to HAMAS and the regime in Sudan, to name two…

There is mounting evidence that the global Jihadist insurgency is fully entrenched in the USA.

Note that it makes little difference if the perpetrators are members of a previously known terrorist organization (such as Al Qaeda or Hezbollah) or are lone actors. Actually, it DOES make a difference. It is difficult to combat a shadowy organization like Al Qaeda, but it is far more difficult to combat lone wolf actors. Al Qaeda may be difficult to infiltrate and gather intelligence on, but how do we “infiltrate” a lone Jihadist?

This is symptomatic of a revolutionary Jihadist subculture metastasizing within the American Muslim community, especially within some of its mosques and organizations. This revolutionary subculture has produced an atmosphere in which Jihadis are inspired to act violently on their own, as well as part of organizations.

This is a very dangerous and volatile situation.

Over the last 12 months alone, we have been provided with a stack of evidence of the Jihadist insurgency inside America. Americans have largely ignored this evidence, or at least failed to “connect the dots.” Seemingly completely unrelated cases do in fact have common threads: they are acts of Jihad. And these are not in actuality isolated incidents, but rather are linked by a common ideology that animates and motivates Jihadis everywhere….it’s only some that respond with actual, overt violent action, but many others are inspired to support passively, with words only, or financially. This is a global movement with a unified core ideology and doctrine rooted in Islam.

It is not difficult to go back and research examples of Jihad in America over the course of a calendar year, such as 2011. What follows is a list of incidents, cases, actions, statements and plots which point to a Jihadist insurgency in our midst: (Keep in mind that insurgencies are 80% civilizational/political and 20% violent/militant.):